A problem progressives have with Libertarians is over the matter of social issues. They say things like, "so you just want to throw everyone out into the street?" Or "so corporations can just do whatever they want with no regulations? That’s corporatism." The great misunderstanding progressives and liberals have about libertarians and noninterventionist policy is not with the foreign policy of peace and trade. They support peace or would like to, in reality they support more war so long as the perceived government hand outs keep coming. They can settle for more war because they see the Republicans as the same thing anyway minus some of the handouts.

They would rather tax everyone especially corporations and rich people in order to give it to the imaginary benevolent over lords in DC who will out of their own goodness redistribute the money to the needy and not drop 708 billion dollars into the defense department for mass murder by choice. If you SAY the war is humane then some of them are sold and they will support it. Likewise is you SAY your foreign and domestic 'aid' is helping the poor, they will believe you.

What the Liberal does not understand is that corporatism is because of government not in spite of it. Where do corporate welfare and bailouts come from? They come from government. That might be through war contracts or it might just be a direct bailout. Without government and the fed you can’t have either one. The government has a reverse midis touch everything they get involved with is ruined. Education, energy, healthcare, housing, foreign aid, even the mail, everything they help they just make more expensive.

When they subsidize higher education they are not doing anything but making it more expensive. Given that universities invest into defense companies, the government is just laundering money through the universities into more war industries by inflating tuition prices and paying for them with guaranteed student loans. The schools know the loans are there so they just hike tuition prices. This makes it doubly more difficult to go to school without getting loan and not having to pay interest. But shouldn't everyone go to college? What if they can't afford it. They still can't afford it, that's how it is now dummy, only now practically no one can afford it. They graduate with the equivalent of a mortgage payment only they don't even get a house for it.

When the government subsidizes alternative energy again all they are doing is driving the prices up. They make it so that if you don't get the government grant, you wont be able to buy alternative energy because it is now impossible to pay out of pocket. I wanted a wind turbine for my house in NC. I ultimately gave up on the idea because of the government paper work and the huge risk I would be taking if any of the grants did not come through. They were willing to pay for 75% of the cost but they also forced the cost up 80% higher than it had been before. That means every person who did buy a turbine just wiped out a lot of tax money from others for nothing. They could have gotten the same thing anyway for less money and not used up any tax money.

When the government gets into healthcare all they do is raise the cost of procedures. It makes it more expensive for all those working people not qualified for the free care. The free care of Medicare and Medicaid cost more in taxes and inflation as well because when the government is paying the prices get jacked up. Also paying for illegals is a drain on the entire system and acts as an incentive for more illegals to come and also to declare they are not working even if they are so that they can continue to qualify for the care or worse to quit working so that they can qualify for the free care. If and when you did not have government involved in the medical industry people didn’t need all of the programs to get care because it was actually affordable. It didn’t cost hundreds or thousands of dollars to go to the hospital. People could pay out of pocket. No one was being tossed into the street, unlike today where young people avoid going to the hospital when they are injured or sick until the point of desperation because they don’t want to spike their health insurance or because they don’t have health insurance because it cost too much every month.

Why is the insurance so high? It’s high because of government protectionism. You can’t cross state lines to buy insurance, there isn’t open competition. You also can’t buy generic drugs or shop for prescription drugs overseas. Everything is so expensive because of the state. People on the bottom need the state’s help to afford care only because the state made it unaffordable in the first place. There is no free market.

Look at the housing bubble, the fed set interest rates low and the banks began the mortgage backed securities fraud gambit and then the government came and bailed out the irresponsible parties and told the public to foot the bill. Now the cost of housing is set artificially high. The prices never would have reached this point without all the 'easy money and loans for anyone' policy created by the risk-free banks. The market never would let a centralized bank set interest rates, never would have removed risk from the lending side of a mortgage, and never would have bailed out those engaged in the fraud who were the last ones holding the bucket and charged the public to pay for it. People who saved money and wanted a home and did not want to take a huge loan were out of luck because so many irresponsible people and greedy banks were pushing up the cost in a credit bubble. All the prices were based on hollow promises of credit not actual capital. And the money for the IOUs wasn't there. But instead of letting the housing prices fall, and banks fail the government propped it all up. Cost of living, more than wages or anything else, are what strap a person into financial stagnation and assures that their hard work never goes anywhere beyond paying the monthlies.

Many progressives are Europhiles. A lot of arguments for progressives begin the phrase well in Europe they x. Guess what in Europe, they are broke. They ran the nanny state with high taxes long enough and the result was collapse. Rather than providing an environment of opportunity based on merit which attracts hard working productive people, the nanny sate drives them away and attracts free loaders. We are at an all time high for unemployment and food stamps. But again why work at a low end job when you can just make the same amount collecting unemployment? Again nothing is more expensive than free stuff.

The same system applies to foreign aid. How much do you think a project for infrastructure cost when the companies involved know that there is millions or billions available from foreign aid? Of course the prices are jacked up. The government employees are well aware of this to and thus the revolving door for all of it. They are all milking the government ATM machine. Only the other side of the ATM machine is not their bank account it's yours and mine. And lastly we have the war profiteering. Paying more doesn't make the military equipment any better just more expensive. That's the one issue Progressives seem to halfway get but then conservatives do not. I say halfway because so long as you wave a flag of humanitarianism in the air even intervention gets a green light no matter how disingenuous the propaganda is. But there is a faction within the progressives that is not fooled by this point and who remain staunchly antiwar.

If we could reach out to these people about the other ills of government intervention and talk to conservatives about the war for corporate welfare state, then we would have a real coalition for liberty. Instead we get attacked from both sides. The left ignorantly screaming corporatism and the right screaming isolationist. The reality is nothing is more inductive to peace than trade. The left and right are controlled by a common emotion, fear. Fear of helplessness, be it of foreign invasion or fear of poverty.

More government is absolutely not the answer.

Sadly the nation is not dividing over war and peace or the 16 trillion dollar debt, erosion of civil liberty, inflation the cost of living, jobs, or anything of real significance. No, instead the country's big dividing issue placing people into one camp or the other in the debate over AR-15s. So let me address that in a few sentences. I am doing it in the second post so as not to hijack my own thread.

Weapons can protect people or be used offensively. Naturally however people are not equal in terms of power and a gun a the great equalizer. Semi-auto can defend against multiple attackers as well as keep the government in check as well as to go shoot up a school. Here is the thing, just like illegal drugs, criminals can get guns if they want and all those school shooters would have done it anyway with the guns they wanted to use no matter what the law was.

I see a lot of flaws with the free market that doesn't work for the common good of the people. I'll go into this later when I come back.

I'm antiwar, but not to the point of pacifism. I believe in self defense, but not in killing civilians and etc. I don't believe in interventionism. Disregard the religious and pro choice stuff in the video because it's not the focus.

Last edited by 33breeze on Fri Jan 18, 2013 11:03 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Kyle

Post subject: Re: Talking to progressives about Libertarian ideas

Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2013 8:26 pm

Speaking out

Joined: Sep 1st, 2012Posts: 176

Great article.

33breeze wrote:

I see a lot of flaws with the free market that doesn't work for the common good of the people. I'll go into this later when I come back.

I think the only flaw with the free market would be the people involved in it. The free market isn't magical, but it can appear to be that if people are industrious and are thoughtful about their actions. I can think of many things that can go wrong in a free market, but it is not the fault of the market.

Ry

Post subject: Re: Talking to progressives about Libertarian ideas

Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2013 1:29 am

Super Anti-Neocon

Joined: Jun 27th, 2005Posts: 34354Location: Japan

The two countries with a lowest violent crime rates and lowest shootings are Japan and Switzerland Japan doesn't have guns and Switzerland has more than anyone. And yet people are not killing each other. Likewise Mexico does not have guns and it has high crime and the US does have guns and it also has high crime.

The claims the guns lead to crime or that lack of guns lead to crime are both erroneous. Poverty leads to crime. The precept ion of futurelessness is why young smart loner boys on psychotropic drugs are shooting up schools. It has nothing to do with the available tool. If they wanted a gun they could get one and if not they could just as easily use a bomb or any sort of melee weapon or even a car or a bus etc weapons are endless you can't ban everything.

Instead of blaming AR-15 have a look at society. If it wasn't an AR-15 it would just be two pistols as it was in the VT shooting which at 32 kills was actually was 6 deaths higher than Sandy Hook of course the TV likes you to think the newest one is always the biggest one and that you don't have enough sense or memory to look it up.

I watched only the first two video that second video lol trying so hard to give a good spin on communism. That bread in Spain example was a nice laugh and that was all he had to say about magically not having competition. Then he just listed a bunch of books. By the way Spain's Coop's collapsed. Let's all be owners what a crock. You can do that right now its called being partners. Nothing prevents you from owning or starting your own business or becoming a partner in a business that has already started other than that you can't contribute to it dont have skills or capital and nothing to offer.

So should the guy washing dishes be on the same level as the owner of the restaurant even though he had to create the building the kitchen all the tools find a cook water advertizing etc first before there were dishes to wash? Ah he should get a portion of what it earns though.. He does how where does the money come from that the owner pays all his employees with? The restaurant of course. Wanna know why the cook makes more than the dish washer? Because his job takes more skill and it is hard to find a good chef it is easy to find a dish washer.

Wanna know what happens besides businesses going out of business form increasing wages? an increase in the price of rent. Instead of putting the burden on the businesses to pay more, why not make your bills less expensive, lower the cost of living. No reason in the world some small group should own all the property and rent it to everyone else. NO where is there more discrepancy in labor vs earnings than between a landlord and his peasants.

I watched only the first two video that second video lol trying so hard to give a good spin on communism. That bread in Spain example was a nice laugh and that was all he had to say about magically not having competition. Then he just listed a bunch of books. By the way Spain's Coop's collapsed. Let's all be owners what a crock. You can do that right now its called being partners. Nothing prevents you from owning or starting your own business or becoming a partner in a business that has already started other than that you can't contribute to it dont have skills or capital and nothing to offer.

So should the guy washing dishes be on the same level as the owner of the restaurant even though he had to create the building the kitchen all the tools find a cook water advertizing etc first before there were dishes to wash? Ah he should get a portion of what it earns though.. He does how where does the money come from that the owner pays all his employees with? The restaurant of course. Wanna know why the cook makes more than the dish washer? Because his job takes more skill and it is hard to find a good chef it is easy to find a dish washer.

Wanna know what happens besides businesses going out of business form increasing wages? an increase in the price of rent. Instead of putting the burden on the businesses to pay more, why not make your bills less expensive, lower the cost of living. No reason in the world some small group should own all the property and rent it to everyone else. NO where is there more discrepancy in labor vs earnings than between a landlord and his peasants.

Distributism isn't communism.There are different levels of wealth. There is another coop in California called the Alvarado Street Bakery. The Mondragon corporation collapsed? I see no evidence of this anywhere. 2011 they made 125 million euros. It is a drop off from the 178 they made in 2010.

33breeze

Post subject: Re: Talking to progressives about Libertarian ideas

Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:15 am

Protesting War

Joined: Jul 23rd, 2012Posts: 272

Kyle wrote:

Great article.

33breeze wrote:

I see a lot of flaws with the free market that doesn't work for the common good of the people. I'll go into this later when I come back.

I think the only flaw with the free market would be the people involved in it. The free market isn't magical, but it can appear to be that if people are industrious and are thoughtful about their actions. I can think of many things that can go wrong in a free market, but it is not the fault of the market.

Thanks, I was also going to mention the negatives of a free market are monopolies, cheap labor. Corporations don't really care about making a superior product. They care about their profits. As the said in the show the Wire, they juke the stats. They look for ways to reduce cost. They engage in wage theft and job elimination. I work for a corporation, and we have always make suggestions higher up to make the service and product better and more customer oriented and they just try to find ways to charge people more money without any improvement in service. They nickel and dime customers. Their real goal is to convince customers they have a better services and products, not actually improve them. My company continues to raise rates and at the same time they do stuff like lay off entire departments. Make people reapply for their positions at a lower pay. Introduce unrealistic quotas to fire people and then later admit the quota was unrealistic and then change the policy. The new hires currently make less than I did as a new hire. People are too scared to start a union here too. I'm eager to start one, but I don't have the numbers to back me up. I admit this government is a mixed economy, but there hasn't been a historical example of a true free market. There has to be some kind of rules in place or the big businesses will drive the smaller ones out of business and corner the market. They are not for competition they are about eliminating competition.

Last edited by 33breeze on Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

33breeze

Post subject: Re: Talking to progressives about Libertarian ideas

Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:25 am

Protesting War

Joined: Jul 23rd, 2012Posts: 272

As far as war goes, it doesn't seem like there is any justification for it. Aside from an outright invasion, I can't think of any other reason we would go to war. We have no business being the world police, and imperialism is immoral.

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